Continuity of Care for Suicide Prevention and Research

Transcription

1 Suicide Attempts and Suicide Deaths Subsequent to Discharge from an Emergency Department or an Inpatient Psychiatry Unit Continuity of Care for Suicide Prevention and Research 2011 This report was commissioned by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) in collaboration with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). David Litts, SPRC Director of Science and Policy, provided overall direction. Alan L. Berman, Executive Director of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), led the administration of the project. David J. Knesper, M.D., Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, is the author.

2 This material is based upon work supported by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration under Grant Number 6U79SM7392. Additional support came from the University of Michigan, Department of Psychiatry. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration or the University of Michigan. This publication supports Goal 7 of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Develop and promote effective clinical and professional practices, and, in particular, Objective 7.4: Develop guidelines for aftercare treatment programs for individuals exhibiting suicidal behavior, including those discharged from inpatient facilities. Cite as: Knesper, D. J., American Association of Suicidology, & Suicide Prevention Resource Center. (2010) Continuity of care for suicide prevention and research: Suicide attempts and suicide deaths subsequent to discharge from the emergency department or psychiatry inpatient unit. Newton, MA: Education Development Center, Inc. This document may be found in the online library of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center: 2

3 Foreword The American Association of Suicidology and the Suicide Prevention Resource Center have provided a valuable service to the nation in preparing this comprehensive report on suicide attempts and suicide deaths subsequent to discharge from Emergency Departments or Inpatient Psychiatric Units. The report, entitled, Continuity of Care for Suicide Prevention and Research is grounded in an extensive review and analysis of the current literature, conducted by David Knesper, M.D. Dr. Knesper s scholarly work on the Report was aided through generous support provided by the University of Michigan while he prepared the monograph. It highlights a critical area for suicide prevention efforts, one that holds promise for reducing the number of suicides in America. The accumulating research in suicide had made it increasingly clear that for those who experience suicidal crises and receive acute care interventions in hospitals and Emergency Rooms, suicide risk does not end at the moment of discharge. Rather, their elevated risk continues or is easily rekindled in the days and weeks that follow, leading to heightened rates of suicide during this post acute care period. However, as is noted in the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, All too often the assumption is that individuals are no longer at risk for suicide once they are discharged from inpatient hospital or institutional settings. (DHHS, 2001) Yet, despite the fact that those who attempt suicide and others experiencing a suicidal crisis who are seen in the health care system are a high risk population going through a clear high risk period, there have been few systematic suicide prevention efforts in the United States that have focused on this population during this time period. Elevated post discharge rates of death by suicide, suicide attempts, and readmissions to acute care services have been repeatedly documented, but this has not been matched by proportionate prevention efforts. Moreover, as this report makes clear, not only has the need been shown to be unmistakable, but there are also promising interventions that can be utilized. In fact, the only two randomized controlled trials in the suicide prevention literature that have shown a reduction in the number of deaths by suicide have both involved following up with high risk populations after discharge from acute care services (Motto and Bostrom, 2001; Fleischmann et al., 2008). The report makes a large number of recommendations for both practice and research. While not everyone may agree with every recommendation, there are core recommendations that are key for behavioral health systems if they are to be designed in a way to optimize their suicide prevention potential and maximize the number of lives that can be saved. These include the establishment of standards for the provision of prompt outpatient care for those who attempt suicide and others at high risk who are discharged from acute care settings. Here the Veterans Administration is providing national leadership. A second is the need for active outreach and/or case management following discharge. Here the report highlights a number of promising practices ranging from the use of Apache community workers to reach out to those at high risk after discharge, to the use of community crisis centers through the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline to provide phone and text-based outreach, to the VA s use of caring letters and the utilization of facility based suicide prevention coordinators. We have known for many years that Assertive Community Treatment was an evidence-based practice that could improve outcomes and prevent readmissions through 3

4 assertive post discharge outreach. The adaptation of similar principles to high suicide risk populations could also be of great benefit. Other nations have also begun to focus efforts in their national strategies for suicide prevention on exactly these high risk populations. Norway s Chain of Care model is highlighted in this report. In Denmark, they have identified four areas where reductions in the number of deaths by suicide could have the greatest impact on their suicide rates. Two of those populations, suicide attempters and those discharged from inpatient units, are very much the subject of this paper, and a third, substance abusers, could also benefit from an extension of these continuity of care principles given the high frequency with which those who are both substance abusers and suicidal are seen in emergency departments and inpatient units for detoxification and other needs. In England, the British National Clinical Study was able to calibrate, by day, week, and month, the degree of post discharge suicide risk, with the greatest risk occurring during the time closest to discharge, leading to recommended standards for prompt follow up within seven days of those discharged from inpatient units (Crawford, 2004). In the United States, this period of high risk and the need for intervention during this time were recognized in the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. Objective 7.1 focuses on the need for follow up after emergency room discharge while Objective 7.4 focuses on the need for aftercare following inpatient discharge. The American Association for Suicidology, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, and Dr. David Knesper have provided an extremely valuable service through this comprehensive review and set of recommendations that have the promise, if acted upon, for constructing a critical safety net during these periods of heightened risk. Richard McKeon, PhD, MPH Chief, Suicide Prevention Branch Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration References Crawford, M.J. (2004), Suicide following discharge from in-patient psychiatric care, Advances in Psychiatic Treatment, 10, Fleischman, A., Bertolote, J., Wasserman, D., DeLeo, D., Bolhari, J., Botega, N., et al. (2008). Effectiveness of brief intervention and contact for suicide attempters: A randomized controlled trial in five countries. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 86, Motto, J.A., Bostrom, A. G. A randomized controlled trial of postcrisis suicide prevention. Psychiatr Serv. Jun 2001;52(6): U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service;

5 Contents List of Exhibits... 6 Executive Summary... 7 Abstract...7 Parts One through Eight...8 Part Nine...12 Part One - Suicide Attempts and Risk for Suicide Deaths Definitions: The Language of Suicide...22 Suicide Epidemiology...23 Part Two - The Principles of Continuity of Care and Transforming How Mental Health Care Is Delivered in America The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and Continuity of Care...26 Part Three - The Emergency Department and Impediments to Suicide Prevention Attitudes, Discrimination, Frequent Visits and Suicide...29 Detection of Concealed Suicide Risk in the Emergency Department...31 Should Emergency Departments Screen for Suicide Risk Routinely?...33 Education and Training for Emergency Department Clinicians...36 Suicide Risk-Reduction Therapies Provided in the Emergency Department...38 Part Four - Psychiatry Inpatient Units: Should More Be Expected? The Collapse of the State Mental Hospital System and the Consequences of Reduced Overall Bed Capacity for the Mentally Ill...42 Psychiatric Hospitalization and the Prevention of Suicide...44 Emergency Psychopharmacology for Suicide Prevention...46 Inpatient Discharge Planning and the Transition from Hospital to Community...49 Part Five - Survival on the Way to Follow-Up Care: Disappointment and Suicide Prevention Patients at Greatest Risk for Non-Attendance or for Untimely, Discontinuous Follow-Up Care: Too Many Answering Machines and Too Little Reliable Follow-up...52 Outreach and Bridging Strategies and Targeting Higher-Risk Groups...54 Disappointment with Outpatient Follow-Up Care and Dropping Out of Treatment...56 Part Six - Evidence-based Psychotherapeutic and Psychosocial Interventions for Suicide Prevention: More Randomized Clinical Trials Are Needed Evidence-based Treatments for the Prevention of Suicide...59 Evidence-based Treatments that Enhance Follow-up and Continuity of Care for Patients at Risk for Suicide...64 Evidence-based Treatments for the Prevention of Suicide Attempts and the Enhancement of Continuity of Care...67 Dialectal Behavioral Therapy for Suicide Prevention...75 Part Seven - Discharge Planning: Guidelines, Expected Best Practices, and Standards for Continuity of Care Standards and Expected Best Practices for Health Care Organizations

6 Guidelines Issued By Professional Associations for Psychiatrists and for Other Mental Health Professionals...96 Part Eight - Exceptional Integrated Systems of Care The United States Air Force The Municipality of Bærum, Norway The Swedish Island Of Gotland Perfect Depression Program, Detroit, Michigan Veterans Integrated Service Networks and Center for Excellence at Canandaigua, New York Georgia State Crisis and Access Line The White Mountain Apache Tribe Part Nine - Ten Continuity-of-Care Principles for Suicide Prevention, Affiliated Recommendations, and New Directions for Research and Public Policy Appendix One - Objectives, Data Sources, Consultations, Assistance, and Information about the Author and the Reviewers Appendix Two - Sampling and Design Characteristics of Clinical Trials Measuring Changes in Suicide Behaviors References List of Exhibits Figure 1. Trends in Annual Rates of Medically-Treated Intentional Self-Harm Events Figure 2. More Frequent Users of the ED Tend to Have Mental Illness, Alcohol and/or Drug Use Diagnoses Figure 3. Precipitous Drop in the Number of State Mental Hospital Beds Figure 4. Cumulative Percentages of Suicidal Deaths During 15 Years After Hospital Discharge Figure 5. Survival Curves of Time to Repeat Suicide Attempt Table 1. Evidence-based Treatments for the Prevention of Suicide Table 2. Evidence-based Treatments that Enhance Follow-up and Continuity of Care for Patients at Risk for Suicide Table 3. Evidence-based Treatments for the Prevention of Suicide Attempts and the Enhancement of Continuity of Care Table 4. Representative Examples of Continuity of Care and Follow-up Standards and Guidelines from Organizations in the United States and Australia Figure 6. Annual Incidence of Suicide Deaths in the U.S. Air Force Figure 7. Annual Incidence of Suicide Attempts in the Municipality of Bærum, Norway Figure 8. Prototypical Course of Major Depression with Suboptimal Treatment

7 Executive Summary Abstract For patients at risk for suicide, discharge from an emergency room or psychiatric inpatient facility is all too often the beginning of a difficult and unpleasant journey across the landscape of a disarrayed mental health care system seeking fundamental transformation. The present mental health care system is pluralistic with competing, disconnected, and autonomous subsystems and with various types of singularly focused mental health professionals. Large numbers of these professionals are in independent practice. America s emergency departments and psychiatric inpatient facilities generally have limited specific assessments, programming, and treatments for people at risk for suicide. Moreover, both can be faulted for doing too little to prevent suicide. Once patients are discharged, the complexity of coordinating and continuing mental health care presents an enormous challenge, confounded by existing fragmentations and gaps in services among service providers. The emergency management of suicide risk is, at present, substandard because so frequently it is removed from evidence-based, clinical practices. Persons at high risk for suicide are seen commonly in America s emergency departments, but they, time and again, go unrecognized. When recognized, the treatment for suicidality is out-referral; however, as many as half of those referred do not attend the first follow-up care appointment that can be weeks away from the initial visit. Disappointment awaits many that do attend because clinical information just recently provided may not accompany the first visit and subsequent care may be marginal or downright inadequate. These standard-of-care practices provide a standard of care associated with an unacceptably high rate of suicide attempts and suicide deaths in the days and weeks subsequent to discharge. There is a better way forward. For individual patients, designing, testing, and implementing integrated networks of care that ensure comprehensive assessments, rapid follow-up, continuity of care, and evidence-based treatments for those at high risk for suicide may prove to reduce suicide rates and, thereby, should complement universal interventions aimed at the general public. Relevant to follow-up and continuity of care subsequent to discharge from an emergency department or psychiatric inpatient unit, this report systematically examines the published literature, summarizes the evidence base, and makes recommendations for practice and for new directions in public policy based on current research. Moreover, this report seeks to identify the most crucial gaps in knowledge and to suggest directions for new research to fill those gaps. About the report: All sections have an ending synopsis called Section-at-a-Glance. Similarly, Section Commentary is used in this report s Part Eight that reviews specific suicide prevention programs in the United States and other countries. Section-related Recommendations are found at the end of each section as well. These recommendations tend to pertain most to the subject matter of that section. All recommendations are mentioned in the Summary found at the beginning of the report. Many of these recommendations are deliberately broad and intended to lead an agenda for discussions regarding bringing about meaningful changes and improvements. Necessarily, these discussions will identify and implement the best means for realizing outcomes. 7

8 Parts One through Eight Targeting high-risk individuals that attempt suicide and a transformed system for providing mental health care in America: The lethal and powerful relationships between suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide ideation prescribe one essential means for effective suicide prevention. Targeting high-risk individuals that attempt suicide and getting them to evidence-based treatments has great potential for saving large numbers of lives. The benefits from this strategy crucially depend on motivating patients discharged from emergency departments and psychiatry inpatient units to follow up with the recommended treatment plan. At the heart of this strategy is continuity of care that links one care provider to another in a timely manner and, in the process, provides all the necessary clinical information required to make the transition smooth and uninterrupted. This sequence is a chain of survival, and it offers a foundation for anchoring a transformed system for providing mental health care in America. Staggering suicide statistics: In 2007, more than 34,000 suicide deaths occurred in the United States and nearly one million worldwide. In the United States, this is equivalent to one suicide every 16 minutes. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death for all ages and the second leading cause of death among year olds. Suicide deaths are most associated with a history of one or more suicide attempts and, current, persistent suicidal ideation. The vast majority of suicides are found in association with mental illness, particularly major depression, and other mood disorders and substance abuse. The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention and the emergency department: Suicide attempts and self-injury make up an ever increasing proportion of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for self-harm. As many as one in ten suicides are by people seen in the emergency department within two months of dying. Many were never assessed for suicide risk. Consequently, the emergency department has become so fundamental to suicide prevention that one goal of The National Strategy for Suicide Prevention is to increase the proportion of patients treated for selfdestructive behavior in hospital emergency departments that pursue the proposed mental health follow-up plan. Since discharge from a psychiatry inpatient unit is so strongly associated with subsequent suicide death, this report concerns suicide attempts and suicide deaths subsequent to discharge from an emergency department or from a psychiatry inpatient unit. Detection of concealed suicide risk in the emergency department: An examination by emergency department professional personnel will not necessarily detect suicide intent or prevent suicide. Unless patients admit to suicide risk or enter an emergency department after an obvious suicide attempt, it is unlikely that emergency department personnel without specialized training will detect acute suicide risk. For this reason, emergency departments will need clinical specialists trained in suicide risk assessment, management and care. Screening instruments may be effective for detecting many patients concealed suicide risk. The proprietary nature of most suicide screening and assessment tools limits their general availability, however. Therefore, more experimentation with this method of case finding is essential. 8

9 Education and training for suicide risk assessment: Reports published by the Institute of Medicine have documented numerous problems in the training of all categories of mental health professionals and have found remarkable variations and inadequacies of curricula, course design, and continuing education. Recommended remedies have been largely ignored. America will be well served by a nationally recognized set of minimum essential skills and core competencies necessary for suicide risk assessment, management and care, and by a system to certify that health professionals have achieved mastery of the key components. Comprehensive suicide assessments are difficult and challenging and may not be accomplished quickly. Particularly challenging is the patient that denies intent or being at imminent risk, but at the same time, has several suicide warning signs and numerous risk factors. For general medicine, high uncertainty of a potentially deadly physical problem is entry criteria for short stay observation units or even hospitalization. However, for mental health professionals, these standard-of-care procedures used by general medicine are problematic when the potentially lethal patient flatly denies intent or being at imminent risk. The solution to this familiar clinical dilemma in suicide assessment and intervention is left largely to individual clinicians. Professional associations involved with setting standards for suicide assessment and intervention need to provide clinicians with explicit guidance about procedures relevant to potentially lethal patients that deny intent or risk. The outcomes of these considerations may have the added benefit of teaching the general public what to do under these same circumstances and of providing the general public with information about the applicable standard of care for clinical practice. Anti-suicide therapeutics: Education and training can go only so far. Suicide risk is acute and may remain high, but the available anti-suicide therapeutic tools all take time to work. Advances in anti-suicide therapeutics provide clinicians with a small, but growing, tool kit. When used longterm by medication adherent patients, lithium, the mood stabilizer with anti-depressant properties, and the unique antipsychotic, clozapine, are associated with reduced, recurrent suicidal acts. There is no convincing information that antidepressants share this property, however, there is considerable evidence that dialectal behavioral therapy (DBT) and other, closely related cognitive behavioral therapies are likely to reduce suicide attempts in outpatient populations. Most recently, two randomized controlled trials found that a version of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is effective in preventing suicide reattempts among emergency department patients. These versions of cognitive behavioral therapy are designed specifically for suicide attempters discharged from the emergency department. For the most part, neither psychopharmacology nor psychotherapy is rapidly acting for enduring effects. There is considerable urgency to identify more rapidly-acting and enduring psychopharmacologic strategies and therapeutic components of cognitive therapies applicable to the emergency department and inpatient psychiatry. High rates of non-adherence to the recommended treatment plan: Some pretty grim statistics are found along the path from the emergency department or psychiatry inpatient unit to follow-up care. As many as 70 percent of suicide attempters of all ages will never make it to their first outpatient appointment. Across all studies, the rate for non-attendance is about 50 percent. Patients with severe and persistent mental illness and few skills, minimal resources, and socioeconomic distress are hard to engage in outpatient treatment. All too often, patient attributes such as these are unchangeable in the near- or even in the long-term; however, organizational attributes can be 9

10 altered. Professional staff with skill deficiencies and organizational discontinuities of care and unplanned discharges, for example, need not undermine hard-won clinical gains and impede the route to follow-up and treatment. Efforts to improve suicide assessments, follow-up and continuity of care and to forestall readmission should target higher-risk patients prone to disengagement and non-adherence. Beginning treatment as soon as possible after discharge and saving lives: Delayed follow-up, without any attempt to improve adherence to the recommended treatment plan, is a form of discontinuity that appears to have severe consequences. The first days and months after discharge is a time of significantly heightened risk. A series of randomized controlled trials make a persuasive case for the correctness of this assertion. In three studies, the anti-suicide intervention started a month after discharge. During that time interval many patients reattempted suicide and a few died from suicide. In contrast, five randomized controlled trials began the intervention at or as soon as possible after emergency department or inpatient discharge. Compared to usual care, significant reductions in repeat suicide attempts were achieved by all five studies. Clinical trials have consistently shown that suicide-prone patients are more likely to adhere to the recommended treatment plan if treatment-engagement interventions are applied near or at the time of discharge. Scheduling the first outpatient appointment within 48 to 72 hours of discharge and making reminder phone calls are among the successful strategies identified. Time spent in the emergency department discussing reasonable treatment expectations and various forms of motivational interviewing achieve higher adherence rates. Intensive outreach interventions such as home visits and frequent home-based therapy sessions appear to achieve the same sort of favorable outcomes. Straightforward and effective suicide-prevention and continuity-of-care strategies: The world s scientific literature contains merely two randomized controlled trials that find an effective means to prevent suicide. The interventions used are quite similar: An initial encounter with someone having clinical knowledge and skills in suicidology followed by regular brief follow-up contacts over 18 to 24 months when the interventions were found to be effective. Both studies involve follow-up subsequent to an acute episode of suicidal behaviors. Neither study was designed to partition the relative contribution of the initial encounter from the subsequent contacts. Two conclusions cut across both studies: First, the prevention of suicide appears to require an initial, meaningful clinical discussion about suicide, and, thereafter, a series of short, non-demanding follow-up contacts that demonstrate continued human interest in the individual. Second, suicide prevention interventions that are provided by individual clinicians to individual patients should complement universal strategies that are aimed at large populations. Such straightforward, often simple, and relatively inexpensive suicide prevention strategies may work by giving patients a sense of connectedness to caregivers and by providing concrete evidence of empathic concern from a compassionate human being. Employing this sort of strategy, another randomized controlled study found that sending non-demanding postcards resulted in approximately half the total number of repeat suicide attempts compared to patients in the control condition. Giving patients crisis cards that describe how to get help at any time predicted a significant reduction in self-harm behaviors according to another randomized controlled trial. There 10

11 needs to be many more randomized controlled trials that sample patients at high risk for suicide behaviors. By so doing, relatively small sample sizes can be associated with results finding statistically valuable evidence about the efficacy of alternative interventions and with expenses that are a fraction of what it would cost to do research on general populations. An infrastructure for continuity of care: Continuity of care and coordination of care require the support of a cohesive health services infrastructure rather than numerous, disconnected facilities and care provision arrangements. Since mental health and general physical health are intertwined, collaboration among mental health and general medical health providers is vital. Rather than the prohibitions against information sharing which characterize disconnected systems, there must be effective sharing of physical and mental health information in high-risk situations. Systems performance improvements require community capacity to track patients across community facilities. When a suicide or serious suicide attempt occurs, ideally all the care facilities involved would come together to do a root-cause analysis to understand how to improve the entire system of care so as to prevent systems failures from contributing to the next suicide death. Examples of integrated care systems that save lives: This review identifies several health care systems that illustrate the actual or potential suicide prevention outcome successes derived from professionals and facilities working together as a single, dedicated unit to prevent suicide. The suicide prevention results presented are often not the product of carefully done research and are derived more from naturalistic, descriptive studies. Nevertheless, the results of all these initiatives are impressive. All of the systems reviewed are, in many ways, demonstration projects that have served as laboratories for various innovations in health care systems. The U.S. Air Force; municipality of Bærum, Norway; Swedish Island of Gotland; Perfect Depression Program in Detroit, Michigan; Veterans Integrated Services Networks; Georgia State Crisis and Access Line; and White Mountain Apache Tribe are all reviewed. They all demonstrate the benefits of a more integrated approach to suicide prevention. Guidelines, expected best practices, and standards for discharge planning: These many findings support a strong evidence base for continuity of care and for starting outpatient, anti-suicide treatments and motivating treatment plan adherence at the time of the emergency department visit or concurrent with hospital discharge and for continuing these interventions for some time thereafter. Of course, each patient discharged from an emergency department or psychiatric inpatient unit receives a discharge plan. The differences between a just-adequate discharge plan and a high-quality plan are the elements that may permit rather than prohibit suicide. Delayed follow-up may have tragic consequences, while immediate follow-up after discharge and adherence to the recommended discharge plan are important opportunities for suicide prevention. Nevertheless, in the United States, general practice guidelines are the basis for accepted practice. There are no widely-accepted, explicit and directive best practices or standards for discharge planning. In the absence of such information about expected best practices, what is easy to do may be mistaken for what is best to do. The general-guidelines approach has the advantage of preserving the clinician s capacity to develop a unique discharge plan and has the disadvantage of preserving and, perhaps, perpetuating minimally acceptable standards of care. 11

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